Overcoming boredom in photography

Bucket List

Do you have a bucket list. This is a list of things you want to do before you die.

The Bucket List is a 2007 movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.  The two guys they portray in the movie are terminally ill and you follow them on their road trip with a wish list of things to do before they "kick the bucket".

Maybe you have a list of things to do. I have a small list myself of things I would like to do.

Hobby and bucket list

Many people take up photography as part of their bucket list. They then may have another bucket list for things they want to photograph.

To a certain point this is perfectly normal for many people. For some of these people once they know how to take a picture sometimes means time to move on.

Bucket list can lead to boredom

If your purpose is just to figure out how to make a certain kind of picture and you accomplish this, then you may quickly become bored with photography.

How to overcome the boredom

You may need to acknowledge that you really had not thought to why you picked up photography except that you thought it would be fun. You may even be a professional who feels burned out. Your goal was to be a staff photographer for some publication and now you have arrived.

First you must acknowledge you have hit a plateau in your career. You have realized your goal and now need to look to the future and find a new goal.

Second you need to decide what you want to accomplish next.

Third I would work to make mastering photography gear not the end goal, but rather using photography to do something else.

My goal

I want to use my storytelling skills to help organizations reach their goals more effectively due to my photography.

A good example is my work with Just Coffee. I helped them tell their story a few years ago. I believe it did help organizations and people to understand what they are doing and get involved by buying their coffee.

Here is the package I created. The purpose was for groups to show this at their meetings and introduce the concept to their members.


Another group I helped was Chick-fil-A. This franchise owner had date nights with his daughter as their special time together. He realized how this is something missing for many families and so he created a Daddy Daughter Date Night at his restaurant. All the dads and daughters had to do was sign up and show up. They created the entire event for them.

Questions on the table to help start conversations with the dads and daughters and photographers taking pictures to help to remember the evening. My goal was to capture the event in a way that helped other franchise owners want to duplicate the event. But when you talk about it you really miss the emotional component that photos can bring. So, I photographed it and they shared it on their intranet at Chick-fil-A and it went viral.

Here is that package.


What keeps me going is helping others tell their stories and there is no shortage of opportunity here. Had I made all my goals about mastering a technique I would be bored and had given up photography and moved on to something else until I became bored again.

Make your goals about serving others and you will always have a reason to celebrate.